Finland shifts to the right but could face weeks of fraught coalition talks

Petteri Orpo’s NCP pushes party of predecessor Sanna Marin into third place in tight election

Finland’s probable new conservative prime minister, Petteri Orpo, will this week start exploring coalition options after a narrow election win that shifted the Nordic country’s politics to the right and pushed the party of his predecessor Sanna Marin, a star of Europe’s left, into third place.

Final results showed Orpo’s National Conservative party (NCP), which campaigned on a platform of reining in public spending, won 48 seats in the 200-seat parliament, with the far-right, anti-immigration Finns party (PS) getting 46 and Marin’s Social Democrats (SDP) 43.